My New Pink Button is pitched as a product which “restores sexual confidence to Women everywhere!” But it seems like it could actually instill anxiety — if you didn’t know you were supposed to have a “youthful” look between your legs, doesn’t the discovery of this stuff foster insecurity?

Well, yeah. Fostering insecurity the only way to sell this crap. Like labiaplasty, anal bleaching, breast augmentation, et al., Pink Button exists only because of the beauty culture propaganda that tells our normal, healthy bodies are ugly. With all the mentions of “fresh’ and “youthful” looking pussies, the creators get bonus misogyny points for ageism.

But rather than rant about all that–which y’all have heard me do plenty of times before–I’d like to talk gender equality. Men’s privates also change color with age.The turgid reddish-purple erection of a 20 year old does not last into middle age–unless the man takes a vasodialator like Viagra, in which case, turgid purpleness is a dead giveaway. And just as an erection doesn’t have to be red and rock-hard to give and receive pleasure, a vulva that’s not glistening pink and “youthful” works just fine too. So I was pleased to see that Pink Button comes with this important user information:

Q. “Can you use this solution on other body parts”?

A. Yes, this can be used on the nipples and men’s genitals.

Dudes! Is your cock is looking a bit…old? Not fresh or young or studly enough? Want to show her the hot red throbber of your youth? I’ve got the perfect product for you! Just don’t expect to find it in my medicine cabinet.

This is going to seem random, but bear with me. I work at a spa. Working with as many woman as I do, I walk into a lot of off beat work place conversations. One of the girls was training to do Brazilian waxings and needed someone to practice on. It’s a little strange to just pull yours pants down in front of a co-worker knowing that she’s about to shine a very bright light on your lady parts. The conversation I walked in on was something like this:

a: ‘Well… I’m not sure. What if mine doesn’t look right? What if it’s not good enough?’

b: ‘Are you kidding?! They’re all good. They’re all perfect just the way they are.’

a: ‘Are you sure? How do you know?’

b: ‘I promise. Pussies are all perfect the way they are. They’re all good.’

This post just made me think of that one little feminist moment of work place entertainment.

I like how on the FAQ they say that having “brown” labia minora is perfectly normal and then on the next answer they’re like, “We’ve developed a solution to this common problem!” Also how there are multiple colors that they named after Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, etc. These poor women. So classy in life, doomed to such terrible merchandising in death.

As for the product at hand (ahem), I’d prefer to dye my ladyflower canary yellow. It’s my favorite color, and it would be a true test of a partner’s devotion. Maybe add some Yankee pinstripes once in a while, y’know, when it’s playoff season.

I blame porn, as I blame it for all of the new genital beauty imperatives for women.

Also, my vulva is dark brown like they’re supposed to be. Pink isn’t the color of youth or health. It’s not a normal state for most people in the world, and I’m sick to death of hearing about how small and neat and plasticine it needs to be.

I think that recent porn, with its close-ups has made the color and size of labia more of a thing, but I think that porn, generally, has contributed heavily to the state of intense objectification we have now, where men feel more entitled than ever to dissect and be critical of women’s bodies, and women feel the pressure of the ramped up male gaze.

HanaMaru, are you me? Because that’s exactly my thinking. Prior to the mainstreaming of het porn, neither men nor women spent a great deal of time staring at lots and lots of naked genitals. There was never that kind of mainstream idealized notion of what vulvas should look like until we started seeing and eroticizing one particular kind on a regular basis.

[...] on Jezebel would make me more insecure than simply finding out about some products existence. TPoH rang in too, with: Pink Button exists only because of the beauty culture propaganda that tells our [...]

[...] is great. But let’s be honest: there’s only so much Being a Bitch about soup ads or genital dye-ing one can do in academia before people start to think about you as Not Serious. So I think of [...]

[...] with plenty of feminist snark—about the many ways women are told that our genitals need to be pinker, surgically altered, and more aesthetically pleasing. But that was just to lambast some ridiculous [...]